Landline Tapping ☎️
My parents locked the landline. We tapped it. They removed the dial. We still tapped it. The phone bill arrived. Everyone acted confused. 😭
I stopped by the Apple Store yesterday and saw the new foldable iPhone coming soon. Of course, that sent me straight down memory lane thinking about just how far phones have come.
Because these young’uns could NEVER imagine what we went through in the hands of landlines before mobile phones came along. 😭
Forget foldable phones. We were just trying to make a call without our parents finding out.
My parents thought they were clever, locking the landline with a padlock.
A PADLOCK! 😭
At first, my siblings and I found a key that could jack it open. Then our folks got wise and took off the entire dialling ring.
Now that was just crazy.
But not for long.
What they didn’t know was that we could tap the numbers.
Ten taps for zero. Five taps for five. A short pause between each number…
And voilà. Local calls. International calls. The lot.
Who discovered this genius trick? I have no idea. And to this day, I wonder if our parents ever knew.
My poor dad was often shocked at how high the phone bill was despite having LOCKED the phone. 🙈
In our defence, we tried not to stay on the line too long.
We tried.
There was something ridiculously satisfying about tapping out an entire number, hearing it ring and realising you’d actually reached the right person. The victory was palpable.
Our phone sat in a cosy corner of the living room and so many memories were made in that little spot. My siblings spent hours there having starry-eyed conversations, whispering into the receiver as if the rest of us weren’t in the same house. 😭
Unfortunately, my parents had an extension installed in their bedroom so they didn’t have to come downstairs to answer calls every time.
Big problem.
One day, I tapped the phone to speak to two of my friends. They were helping me fabricate lies to tell my parents so we could go to the annual carnival at Tafawa Balewa Square.
I was DYING to go.
My dungarees and Timbs were already on standby. Why we were wearing ankle boots in Nigerian heat still baffles me today.
“Tell them it’s in Ikeja and it’s an only-girls party,” Frances said.
Frances was always reasonable.
“No, just say it’s a party in Ikeja, around your lesson off Allen. You don’t need to mention whether there’ll be boys or not. We’re not going without you!” Seun said.
Seun was the ringleader.
We were about 15 or 16. Seun was going to drive one of his dad’s cars (or something equally ridiculous considering our ages) and somehow we were going to make our way to TBS on Lagos Island.
So there we were, cooking up lies and strategies, when suddenly another voice came through the line.
My dad’s.
He said my full government name😩
Then followed it with a calm yet stern:
“DROP! THAT! PHONE!”
Agh!!! My own was finished.
My dad had been listening to the conversation from the extension upstairs. I never knew what he heard.
Seun and Frances hung up with the speed of lightning.
So did I. Then I ran up to my room. My brain was on overdrive like a fidget spinner.
My rep! My life!
Dad never asked who my friends were. He didn’t ask where we were actually planning to go. He didn’t even ask how I made the call. He didn’t ask for an explanation.
I simply never went to the carnival.
Instead, I faced the wall for almost TWO HOURS while Nigeria played a football match behind me and everybody else watched with excitement.
Passive aggressive parenting🙆🏾♀️
Did Seun and Frances go to the carnival without me?
Of course.
Did I stop tapping the phone after that?
Of course not.
We even eventually discovered a way to tap it without the calls appearing on the bill.
God forgive us, mbók. 🙈
And somehow I can still remember random landline numbers from all those years ago: 521971, 834742, 966109…
Yet ask me for a phone number I saved yesterday and I have absolutely no idea.
And don’t even get me started on trips to NITEL to pay, or contest those mysterious phone bills.
The queues. The coaxing. The paper files. 😩🤦🏾♀️
Who else remembers landline tapping? And, more importantly, does anyone still remember their old landline number?
See you next Friday for more Mbōk. ☕️